Not entirely relevant, but what the hell - I went to see ‘Waltz with Bashir’ the other day, an Israeli animation about the first Lebanon War, told from an ex soldier’s point of view. 

Wow – amazing animation and quite a powerful film. It’s done in both 2d and 3d, though it’s done so seamlessly it’s practically impossible to tell what’s what. Not many animation films are as innovative and ground-breaking as Waltz with Bashir is. 

After the screening there was a Q&A with the art director - David Polonsky.  He came across as unusually honest, intelligent and modest; some of the audience questions seemed pretty odd and unfair (“Would you donate the income from the film to [such and such] Palestinian cause” to name one). In all cases, the answers were genuine and non-evasive. 

In the process of trying to promote your film, it’s often tempting to get swooped into the hyperbole machine. If there’s one thing that this night reminded me of is that honesty should never, and does not have to be, compromised anywhere along the creative process or afterwards. 

On the more practical side, this has also shown me the level one can reach with 2d flash animation. I’ve spent time since then refreshing my memory in the program. It’s proving relatively easy, considering I haven’t touched it for about 7 years. I’ve decided not to abandon 2D animation, and try to keep practicing on the side, as well as progressing in 3D.

 

 

Modelling is all done. They're quite badly modelled, in terms of movability or rigg-ability, but as far as modelling for the sake of decor goes, I think it'll do just fine. I liked Jared's comparison to a movie-set: from the right angle it looks amazing, but walk behind it and it's cardboard and cellotape. It's more or less the approach I went with.

Blah. Trying to learn a bit about texturing, UV thingy, bump mapping, and other stuff. I'm way over my head here, but hey - the first step to failure is trying right? 

And this is the modelling proccess, so far:

My attempt at texturing.

To be honest, I quite like this. Ah well..

So the decision was made to go with Post-Apocalyptic again. In terms of script and story ideas, I thought it would be interesting to examine the environment through a narrative that is emotional. We talked about having a woman leaving a voicemail to her loved one, just a moment before the disaster hit. I went as far as writing a script for it, one that can be seen earlier on the blog.  This was the theme and the story. Dan brought up an artist that he’s quite keen on – John Virtue. We were all quite taken by him – we liked his rough and dark textures, his play on shadows and lights. 

I’m not one for traditional art, the type that was painted hundreds of years ago and can be found in dusty museum. When I think exciting art, I think comic books. I’ve looked at a few comics artists that to get inspiration from.

 Bill Sienkiewicz

Dave McKean

And the magnificent Michael Gaydos

Y the Last Man is a comic book by Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra.  Again, this demonstrates the effectiveness of entering a scene of destruction, and entering it late. Nothing hooks an audience like immediate shock, I’ll argue. These are excerpts from the very first issue. Worth checking out.

Okay, so by the next meeting – we had nothing. We shot down every idea, and were very low on positive energy.

I brought up Post Apocalypse again, and brought ‘Saving Private Ryan’ as an example of the kind of environment I mean. Not totally ruined, but just damaged buildings in a city. When that movie is brought up, people immediately think of the impressive opening scene – the invasion of Normandy. I was actually referring to later on in the scene though, where they’re going through the war-torn European streets. 

I occasionally read script-writing guides and books, and it is usually said that as far as timing is concerned, it’s best to enter a scene as late as possible, and leave it as early as possible. Kind of like how people try to attend parties – don’t want to come too early, and don’t want to overstay the fun part. I think it’s really engaging to take this concept to the extreme – throw you in a scene of chaos, where you’ve no idea what’s going on. Lost did it extremely well – the first scene in the very first episode – the one that sold it to millions of viewers worldwide – is the chaos that ensues right after a plane crashes.  It’s also a demonstration of human fascination with destruction.  For some reason, seeing something built does not often give an audience the same sense of excitement as seeing something ruined and destroyed.

Another scene that I showed was Sarah Connor’s nightmare in Terminator 2, the one where she tries shouting to the families in the playground, but no words are coming out of her mouth. A moment after they all die in a horrible nuclear explosion. It’s a scene that stuck in my head, and has been there ever since I first saw the movie, more than 10 years ago.

Sigh. I miss Cape Town.. 

Anyway, the other idea was a post-apocalyptic city. 

As you probably know, this idea was reinvented and repacked, and this is what we're working on now. At the beginning though, it didn't pass. It was said to be too difficult to model, too committing in terms of scope and size.

 

 

After the first meeting, we all agreed to go back and try to work on the two ideas that weren’t ruled out: The one was the Ghost Town, and the other was Sarah’s Idea, a dressing-room, possibly in a theatre. Moulin-Rogue-esque, perhaps.

I went home and did this crappy, rushed little drawing.

My ideas for the Ghost town moved along the lines of a lone traveller or a family arriving at the city, to find out that it’s completely empty. I envisioned the city being quite deep-south USA, and heavy on the eeriness.

For the dressing-room, I kinda saw an old lady coming back to confront her past. In my head she was a dancer or an actress or a working-girl, something that required youth and beauty. She’ll come back, and it will mostly a play of her and her reflection through the room ( the room representing the past of course).

 

By the time we met up again, most of the group have decided they don’t actually want to do either of the projects. They said they weren’t excited by either of the two, and so we were back to square one. I think at this point I started to feel like the group dynamics tend to be a bit too negative, and the general mood – deflated.

This is something that has lingered for quite a while, and only recently is showing sign of dying down.  I can’t really put my finger on the cause, but it seems like every time we find something that we agree on and want to build on, the groups as a collective find reasons to dislike it, and get quickly demotivated again.

 

Here are some of the pictures I showed at the first meeting, when the idea of a post apocalyptic was brought up and shot down again. I thought  New Orleans might be a good place to look for pictures of destruction. the way I'd envisioned it first, we'd have one quite impressive ruined building, next to some less impressive ones.

Another early idea was a lighthouse on a remote island. I’ve taken some pictures in Cape Town, South Africa, of just that, so I’ve brought them along.

We’ve talked our way out of the idea; mainly because it would be a project that would heavily involve special effects and texturing, but little in the way of modelling. I also don’t actually like the idea of a lighthouse. Looking back though, trying to model/texture it can be an interesting experience. I’m already thinking cell-shading. Probably gonna give it a go when I have more time.

Oh, that last picture is not from cape town, It's actually from the movie 'Princess Mononoke', in case anyone gets confused.

Another idea I brought up was a market.  When I grew up, going to the market was always a pretty interesting experience. (I think that's retroactive imagination doing its magic here - It's probably just interesting now, in hindsight, and was just seen as a boring chore when I was a kid)

Unlike most European markets I've seen, the markets I used to go to (in Arabic villages in Israel) had no regard for ‘health and safety’ or any such things. It was messy, loud, and extremely colourful. Everyone was always shouting, arguing prices and greeting acquaintances. You always have 50 things going on at the same time. It’s crude and it’s fun.

It probably would have been hell to animate, but very satisfying if you can actually pull off.

I can’t remember why, but the idea wasn’t really discussed seriously. I take it the others weren’t keen enough on it, and I wasn’t passionate enough to advocate it.